‘Independence Day’ holds up as a movie and a message for today’s world | Opinion

Every year, I rewatch the greatest movie ever made, “Independence Day,” the blockbuster that starred a young Will Smith, Vivica A. Fox and Jeff Goldblum. I plan to watch it two or three times this year.

When it was released in 1996 a day before we celebrated the Declaration of Independence in the U.S., the movie’s special effects felt revolutionary. But I don’t watch it for the special effects, which no longer seem very special given the Marvel universe. Three years after “Independence Day” hit theaters, “The Matrix” took special effects to another level, anyway.

I keep watching the movie because its premise is silly and improbable and worth rooting for. It’s my annual reminder that this country can still lead the world to better days no matter the obstacles we face, no matter the obstacles we put in our own way. I’m needing that reminder more now than I’ve needed a reminder in quite a while.

For weeks now, Americans have been fed a steady diet of doom, a seemingly endless stream of headlines documenting that this country’s baser instincts are winning.

Abroad, our leaders continue supporting an ungodly Israeli attack on innocent Palestinians, including the use of starvation as a war tactic.

We bombed Iran, a nation that did not attack us, and sent a message while saying the opposite that it can prevent future attacks only by developing nuclear weapons, the kind of protection North Korea enjoys. We violated Iran’s sovereignty, setting a precedent that says countries have the right to attack others based on imagined but unrealized threats. And all we got for those efforts is a fragile ceasefire and uncertainty about how much we slowed Iran’s nuclear program, some estimates saying a few months, others a couple of years.

Irresponsible and reckless funding cuts to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have likely already led to tens of thousands of deaths worldwide and jeopardize the lives of millions of others — funding that cost a paltry 17 cents per day for the average American.

Back at home, masked groups of men continue roaming and snatching people off the streets as though we are living in a dystopian movie rather than what’s supposed to be the freest, finest democracy on the planet.

Our government is punishing people for unpopular speech and dismantling institutions of higher education that had long made the U.S. a magnet for the world’s best and brightest.

We are literally taking from the poor to further enrich the wealthy, putting at risk the lives of the most vulnerable Americans. Republicans in red states are forfeiting billions of dollars of federal funding — and the jobs that could be created — to hurt the people who sent them to Congress.

We are uprooting decades-deep civil rights laws that forced us to finally live up to the ideals that were established on our first Independence Day 249 years ago.

It feels very much like “Independence Day,” only it’s not invading aliens snuffing out the lives of millions of people and flattening major cities before anyone knows what’s hitting us, or what to do about it. The aliens are us, the Trump administration backed by tens of millions of our brothers and sisters, neighbors and strangers.

Our devolution has been so rapid, it’s been hard to catch our breath, let alone figure out a strategy to reverse course before even more damage is done. There seems to be no end in sight, that the worst is yet to come.

And yet, in that silly movie with the improbable plot, people found ways to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and decide to fight against seemingly impossible odds, much like what happened in 1776.

There was little time to feel sorry for themselves, little time to lick their wounds. They had work to do — and they did it.

I wish we could have avoided the harm far too many are already experiencing, wish we had the foresight to not revert back to the chaos of four years ago. Unfortunately, we didn’t.

We can’t undo what’s been done. But we can join that long, American tradition of not giving in when things are bleakest.

Independence Day shouldn’t just be a day of celebration. It must be our guide to not give up.